Fidelity Digital Assets has identified six structural risks to the thesis combining artificial intelligence and digital assets, cautioning that public blockchains are not guaranteed to capture the sector's growth.
Published on August 19 by Senior Research Analyst Max Wadington, the Fidelity report addresses potential hurdles for blockchain adoption within the AI space. The primary concern raised is that AI agents may not converge on public blockchains at all. Wadington explained that closed systems operated by large technology firms and fintech platforms could absorb similar activity due to advantages in performance, cost, user experience, and regulatory clarity.
"Even if AI drives a substantial increase in overall digital economic activity, there is no guarantee that public blockchains will capture a meaningful share of it," Wadington wrote.
The report follows statements from Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl, who recently named Ethereum, Solana, Worldcoin, and Bittensor as networks positioned to benefit from AI adoption across agentic finance, verifiable record-keeping, and decentralized AI.
Fidelity outlined five additional risks alongside the adoption question:
- Payments: While high payment activity and stablecoin usage could drive adoption, they may generate relatively low fees and primarily benefit stablecoin issuers and adjacent service providers rather than underlying base-layer tokens.
- Economic Value: Increased software output does not automatically translate into greater economic value.
- Technical Differentiation: AI could commoditize software development, weakening technical differentiation and making liquidity, distribution, security, and trust the more durable advantages.
- Security: AI lowers the cost of both finding vulnerabilities and writing code, turning security into a key competitive differentiator.
- Compliance: Systems with clearer identity and permissioning frameworks may prove more suitable for institutional adoption.
Fidelity did not forecast any specific outcomes, instead framing the points as risks that could impact the amount of value public chains ultimately capture.
